The Truth is Over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Morrigan the Nightmare Queen
Summary: Nuttin' big- PG13 for graphic descriptions of exploding brains and people being electrocuted.


"…Electroshock therapy…lobotomies…all of psychology's dregs." Dana Scully said as she closed the files. "Why do you think she can answer your questions?"  
Fox Mulder didn't reply as he brought the car to a screeching halt in front of 6 Constantinople Street. He spoke as she climbed out of the car: "Scully, the only thing connecting the victims is that they were all patients of this mental ward. We know that someone or something has it in for these people, and if there is anyone who could identify it, it's probably her. If you remember, she had other patients write down everything they knew about the others to get bonuses. She supposedly has a photographic memory, so she should remember all of those details."  
Scully sensed that he was hiding something, either a motive or a suspicion, but she knew it was useless to pursue the point.  
Agatha Ratched was over 80, but she walked unaided. Mulder instantly felt suspicious. He had run into very few people who seemed to emanate the sinister power that Miss Ratched did, but those he had met were as dangerous as they came. Alex Krycek, Cancer Man, the First Elder, and Deep Throat were all people equally strong, and they were all dangerous. He instantly suspected something.  
  
Two hours later, they had gotten nowhere. "I still can't think who would have it in for all my previous patients. Maybe they had some creditors that they didn't mention. I really don't know."  
"Now, Miss Ratched, you said your mental clinic regularly practiced electroshock therapy and lobotomization during your tenure?" Mulder cut in. Scully stared at him. When he interjected like this, it was to suspects, not interviewees.  
"Yes, I'm afraid," Miss Ratched didn't look like she meant it "those things were very popular back then. Generally, though-"  
"Sorry. Where's the bathroom?" Mulder cut in again.  
  
"I didn't like it," Mulder said as they drove towards the old hospital sight.  
Scully exploded: "What the hell do you think you're doing cutting people off like that? What are you trying to accomplish? The first rule of interviews is to never make the interviewee fell threatened. They're more likely to respond if they don't fell paranoid!"  
"Tell these that" Mulder said as he dropped a bottle into her lap. It was a regular orange pill bottle, full of large red pills that Scully had never seen before. "Open one."  
Tentatively, Scully pried open the red gel casing. She inhaled sharply.  
Inside was a miniature transistor, bound in tiny fibers. There were tiny copper protrusions sticking off of it. As Scully watched, it turned black and crumbled to dust in her hand.   
"Mulder, where did you get these?"  
"Scully, when have I ever interrupted the interviewing of a suspect?"  
"Oh no…you didn't…that's illegal, and you know it! We could be arrested! And worst of all, we can't use it in court, and you know it. Why did you bother," she looked out the window and suddenly realized that they were headed back to D.C. "and where are we going?"  
"To visit the Lone Gunmen."  
Scully groaned. The Lone Gunmen were a group of ultra-paranoid hackers who believed in all sorts of government conspiracies. She particularly disliked visiting them because one of them, Frohike, seemed infatuated with her.  
  
"It's a nano-neuronic transmitter. It attaches to the inside of the digestive system and attaches these leads to the nerves it can reach through the intestinal wall. It observes the nervous activity and sends the data back to a central source. These ones disintegrate on contact with air as a precaution. Where did you get these?"  
Mulder stared at him. He had never seen Langly speak so knowledgeably about anything. "Never mind where I got these, how do you know all this crap?"  
Langly waved his hand dismissively. "Back in the 60's and 70's, the government tested the theory of false familiarity on mental patients as part of their mind-control experiments."  
"What's 'false familiarity'?" Scully asked.  
Langly opened his mouth, but Frohike cut in  
"False familiarity is the concept that you can make people do things by triggering their innate paranoia in a certain way. The way to do that is to present them with a situation that looks like their normal environment, but that seems horribly wrong. It's first recorded occurrence was in the Hester Prynne case back in the 17th century. The ultra prude Puritan community seemed on the surface like any European settlement, but their humorless morbidity made the scenario seem like a sick, twisted parody of the immigrant's original community."  
"The 'Hester Prynne Case'?" Mulder asked.  
Byers filled them in "Yes. Hester was a woman who moved to the Massachusetts Bay colony to wait for her husband. After a few weeks there, she got pregnant." he paused and seemed to be groping for words "by the local minister."  
Scully's eyes widened in sickened surprise as Mulder choked with laughter. "In a Puritan community?" she asked.  
"Yep," Byers confirmed, "when going through a document found in the Salem custom house, the CIA heard about it and got the idea. After some experiments in mental institutions, prisons, and the like, the CIA, hence the Syndicate started some controlled experiments in high-pressure places like mental institutions…" Scully's eyes widened as Mulder's face got it's X-Files look of intensity "…and they also started the psychological fads of lobotomization and electroshock therapy to increase pressure on patients so they would cave more easily."  
Frohike smiled at Scully "That answer your question?"  
  
It's tomorrow in 10 minutes and I'm still at square one. OK, maybe two. Scully thought as she stared at her coffee cup. She and Mulder had been working on the case for a week, but after their meeting with the Lone Gunmen three days ago, the trail had dried up. Mulder had wanted to interview Miss Ratched again, but Scully had convinced him that it would be pointless. She would deny all government involvement, and while there were records of numerous lobotimizations that occurred under her watch, they had been considered valid therapy back in her day, as she had been quick to point out. Mulder, she knew, was digging through her hospital's records for some proof, but she had exhausted her ideas.  
I never checked my messages. I must be slipping. She stood up reached for her machine. Gotta lay off the coffee she thought as she say the red RECORDING light on instead. Didn't used to do this. Then the heavily-shod foot smashed the window in front of her.  
  
Agent Mulder was staring at the impenetrable bureaucratic mess that was the case records for Ezra P. Bradshaw Mental Facility, and decided that he needed some aspirin. He was rooting through his drawer when he heard his door close he looked up and saw the man that had had only heard described by his partner, but who he knew was one of the master puppeteers of the invasion of earth. He also knew that he was somewhat sympathetic to Mulder's search for the truth.  
  
Scully jumped in surprise and fear as the man climbed through her shattered window. She thought of her gun, turned to run, but then she heard the distinctive click of a gun being cocked. A voice behind her spoke.  
"Put your hands up and turn around. Slowly."  
She revolved in place and to look at her malefactor. Looked like an American Indian of some sort, and although she was sure it was her imagination, he looked about seven feet tall. His face wore an expression of crazed fear and rage that she had only seen a handful of times before.  
"Are you Dana Scully?" he asked.  
Scully could barely nod in shock. She did not have a clue who he was or how he knew her name, but he was already talking again:  
"I followed you from Big Nurse's place…miss Ratched's place…you need to know…we've been doing it…she's been controlling us…somehow, staying in that place that mental…mental hospital…they're the sick ones…but she made me kill them…no evidence…in the place.. the sick ward…there's what you need… furnaces… elevator... floor…I have some proof…no…no…it's in my head…it's in my head…ARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!"  
With a supreme ululation of pain, he dropped to the floor and clutched his head. The gun went skittering across the floor. Snapping out of the shock of this man's insane speech, Scully ran forward. He seemed to have gotten partially over it, but was still lying on the floor. Scully, in a voice much higher than her own asked, "how do you know about me? How do you know this about Miss Ratched?"  
The man staggered again and began in his staccato oration again "not much time… but… fingernails… he said you'd know him by those…let me find the truth about Big Nurse… helped me find you… said he'd see your partner… time…time is not on my side."  
Then before Scully could stop him, he put the gun to his temple and squeezed the trigger. Scully instinctively ducked as blood spattered her wall.  
  
Mulder stood up slowly. He didn't know why Well-Manicured Man was there, but he had a hunch that it had something to with his current case. His informants had never shown up on a whim but, as he reminded himself, Well-Manicured Man wasn't an informant. In fact, Mulder wasn't sure what side he was on. He was an important member of the Syndicate, but he had provided Scully with a lifesaving clue in one of their investigations. He decided that it would be more politic to let Well-Manicured Man kick off the conversation.  
"Agent Mulder." It wasn't a question. "I have watched you for years, even though you have never seen me. I do believe that Agent Scully told you about me. I am here to tell you something, and I don't have much time: you are close to the truth on this one; destroying this part of the syndicate's operation will bring the truth to light, or at least some of it. Nurse Ratched was integral to the project that the Lone Gunmen spoke of, and guilty of many other things. Right now, living proof of her project's conditional success has been freed and has contacted your partner. You must join Agent Scully and destroy project Second Genesis. By whatever means necessary. Do you know what date the Titanic sank?"  
Stunned by the question, Mulder nodded.  
"Then find Agent Scully. Now!" And he strode out of the room.  
Mulder ran into the hallway, but there was no sign of him there. He headed for his car.  
  
At Scully's apartment, he found her missing and a hastily scrawled note taped to the door. Mulder: Gone to morgue. Big stuff. -Scully.  
  
At he morgue, Mulder and Scully told each other what had happened as Scully gave the dead man an autopsy. "So what did say in his ramblings?" Mulder asked as Scully made some secondary incisions.  
"Listen," Scully replied and handed him her answering machine. To Mulder's incredulous stare, she said "I was trying to listen to my messages when he broke in. I had just hit the record button by mistake, so I caught the whole thing on tape. Listen."  
Mulder listened to the whole exchange three times, and said "Scully, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you cut open this guy's head -to the extent that he didn't do that himself, that is- and look at his brains. Or what there is left of them anyway."  
"Right." Two minutes later, Scully had located something. "Mulder," she said "take a look at his muldella. It's covered in those wire things that Langly told us about."  
Mulder took one look at the bloody chunk that Scully was holding out to him. One organ looked like another to him, but Scully was right: it was covered in those pill-wires.  
"Scully, how far is Ezra P. Bradshaw Mental Facility?"  
  
Two hours later, Mulder and Scully were walking into the abandoned medical facility. As they walked through the building, Scully could empathize with her dissectee (Chief Bromden, as they had later learned he was called). The rooms were bare, stark, and claustrophobic. It didn't seem like a place for people, more like a place for lab rats, nonhuman experimentees, if that. Which, as she reminded herself, was what these people might have been. She would normally have been skeptical of the whole premise, but she knew, for a fact that the CIA had been testing with mind control during the 60's.  
They walked in silence until they came to the room that still housed the old electroshock equipment. Mulder looked over the whole setup while Scully looked at the control panels.  
"Hey Scully, doesn't this look like a torture machine or a cross? Which come to think of it, is what they were."  
"That assumes, of course, that those paranoiacs the Lone Gunmen are correct, which is assuming a lot. Besides, look at this: this junk is still getting power."  
"Well-Manicured Man is on their side," Mulder said as he absent-mindedly maxed out all the power settings on the electroshock equipment and watched the volts/amps needles drift up past the red lines. Then he suddenly jumped up and punched a number sequence on the only number keypad there:041512. There was a hissing noise from a few rooms away. They ran into the old patient's ward…only to find that it wasn't there. The floor had receded, revealing a large workspace. There were people, scientists and technicians and the like, walking around. "Mulder, how-" Scully began, but he cut her off "Well-Manicured Man's clue: the date the Titanic sank. Now remember: act like you own the place." And they went down into the pit.  
  
"Project code?" the MP on duty asked them. Scully felt a brief surge of panic, which died instantly to a wave of relief after Mulder said "Second Genesis". One minute and two temporary authorization badges later, Mulder and Scully had free run of the area.  
Reaching into a fog-making machine that she and Mulder had unearthed, she found a medium-sized vial and pulled it out. She read the chemical contents: "LSD… sodium pentathol… Ratalin… and a few things I don't recognize. Mulder, this was probably key! A drug of this potency released by this fog-making machine onto people would make them very open to external control and artificial mood alterations. This is sick. But Well-Manicured Man said that we had to destroy this place. Any ideas as to how?"  
"Way ahead of you," Mulder said. Scully looked and didn't see him anywhere. "Mulder?"  
"Up here," she looked up and saw Mulder hooking a pipe on the ceiling to the machine. "Pocket that vial and turn this thing on."  
Deciding to ask questions later, Scully turned the machine on after nearly tripping over the machine's disconnected hookup to the ventilation system.  
  
On the stairs heading back up, Scully had just opened her mouth to ask Mulder about the machine when he whipped around, pulled out his pistol, and fired one shot at the machine.  
He was not shot down in the return fire that Scully had expected, mainly because easily half the room was enveloped in a god-awful explosion of fire. Scully screamed as she saw the world seemingly erupt in flames in front of her. "Mulder, what-?"  
"Natural gas!" Mulder roared over the din as the machine belched out billing clouds of flame. In the fist half-second, the fire was completely out of control. "I hooked up the natural gas line to the machine, and spread it by turning the machine on. All that remained was for us to ignite it!" He sounded quite pleased.  
  
Back in the electroshock room, Mulder and Scully were starting to close the subterranean lab when they heard a click behind them. They turned and saw Miss Ratched, looking very dangerous for a eightysomething lady with a 9mm pistol. She looked quite unhinged. "You destroyed it! All my work! All my efforts to create perfect acceptance! All gone!" she shrieked "You'll die for that! But first," she turned to Mulder "Give me those pills you stole!"  
Mulder looked quite paralyzed by the sudden shift in scene. Miss Ratched put her gun hand on the metal cross as she stretched out the other hand to take the pills from Mulder. Scully had an inspired idea; turning to Mulder, she opened her mouth as if to say something…then in one swift, deft motion, she threw the switch to start the electroshock machine.  
There was a god-awful explosion of sparks as Big Nurse was seized by the awesome voltage that Mulder had prepped the machine with earlier. Sparks and blood exploded from her eye sockets as the electricity poured through her aged body. In a few seconds, it was all over.  
"Good God, what did I do?" Scully whispered as she stared at the charred body lying on the floor. She could remember when that had been a complete human being, alive and whole. Then she had… she closed her eyes.  
"Poetic justice," Mulder said, staring at the body with a mixture of nausea and grim amusement. "Who knows how many people she did that to?"  
"I wonder if this will make a difference." She mused. "Did this affect your all-consuming conspiracy theory?"  
"Eeny-meeny chili beanie, the spirits are about to speak. Damned if I know."  
Scully felt the two lumps in her jacket that were the vial and the answering machine tape. Maybe Mulder's conspiracy theories hadn't changed, but hers certainly had. 


End file.
